23 Responses to “HOLY FUCKNOLY!!111!!!11!!”

You should be proud of the Iggles CPP.
Look, Vick is talented but is specialized enough in his skills that virtually every team in the NFL could have begged off on grounds of “Well, we don’t have a role for him”.
The Iggs can work him creatively into their offense and also decided that rehabilitation of a criminal who has done his time should not be the negative pub BS that it is threatening to be.
Good for the Eagles, good for Andy Reid, and BTW I hope the good karma and lessons rub off on his kids too.
This doesn’t excuse Vick of anything he did, and neither does it give him a free pass in the future. Rather, it gives him a chance at redemption. This is what we should be about, as lovers of sport and as citizens.

fuck redemption ‘Stache. dog fighting dude. motherfucking dogfighting. then he comes out and hooks up with noted AR wackaloon terrorist front/money laundering HSUS. he can do redemption someplace else. like prison guard in northern michigan or some shit like that.

BM,
Ok I have no idea what HSUS is. I’ll search….Of course, societal hypocrisy has already driven Vick to the refuge of Tony Dungy (who, by all accounts, is a decent man) but by extension also to all the Jesus-freaks (who by all accounts are largely not decent people)
And quit being disgusted by dogfighting if you haven’t led a vocal charge against industrial cattle farming and CAFOs etc. Torture is torture….don’t pick and choose.

we’ve been down this road before, I fear. Entertainment (or better put “entertainment”) is not equal to eating. to me it’s like the difference between saying “hey, here’s all these human occupations that do various things we value and, gee, occasionally some dudes are going to die in industrial accidents” versus “hey, let’s put some guys in a ring for UltimateKIllerZFiGhtingAwesomeness and maybe every so often some guy will get killed, tru brah!”. The purpose matters even if the result (some dude dying / some animal dying) are the same.

just because cattle standing shoulder to shoulder in their own shit for weeks while being force fed corn they werent evolved to eat before being electrocuted (like vick did!) and slaughtered in their prime isnt done for entertainment means its ok? just as long as the brutality isnt done for fun, but a purpose society can agree to approve of because to do otherwise might lead to personal inconvenience and change in behavior if you want to be consistent in your concern for animals. but nah, its much easier to rail on about how evil vick is. in fact its the easiest thing in the world since no one will oppose you. just like its easy to ignore the animal brutality one is complicit in.

by the way, 2000 cattle baked to death in nebraska feedlots last month. anybody care? but if you leave 1 dog in a car in the summer and it dies, look out.

as an eagle fan i have no idea why they signed vick. it doesnt really make much sense for the team as far as i can see. they must be looking to move kolb or something or cut feeley.

Very well said, Ron. When I said “Torture is torture…” I meant to convey that the motivation has nothing to do with it.

Also, I can’t see the Eagles using Vick in a primary QB role. I think they may use him more like Westbrook, with some ‘Wildcat’ (man, that idea sure caught fire in a freaking year, didn’t it?) thrown in. Vick signed because there weren’t many takers and he has to take what he can get and try to prove his worth.

I also think there are non-football issues at play. Andy Reid, unfortunately, has two sons who have run afoul of the law quite a bit. Maybe he sees redemption as a worthy goal and gets the Eagles to take a chance on Vick—pure conjecture on my part of course.
Also conjecture—Goodell has had a chat with some of the more stable teams and orgs and encourages them to see if they can give Vick a break; Eagles did, even though they didn’t necessarily need him.

Can his reinstatement be contingent upon fighting one or many of those bigass UFC guys, followed by running the 400 meter hurdles on a track of rusty nails, and lastly swimming the 100 meter freestyle in a pool of hypodermic needles used exclusively by AIDs and hepatitis patients. If he can do that, I’m cool with him playing.

Nice view of punishment, Genomic Repairman.
I guess then that Stallworth can be reinstated after he’s been hit by a Bentley going 60 mph.
And BTW, if you have ever eaten industrially farmed meat then you can be reinstated into society after you have been kept in a crowded pen for months, force fed stuff that you cannot naturally process (with supplements and antibiotics to the extent that your shit is toxic due to the contents of your meals) and then some flesh has been harvested from you for the enjoyment of others at a convenience price-point that should include a cheap mass-produced plastic trinket. Your logic, not mine. If you want an eye for an eye, bring it on.

Wow so me eating food for survival and a guy killing dogs because they wouldn’t win fights and make him money are now the moral equivalent. Love that. Hell at least I have the balls to lay my name to post rather toss out a quick jab with an anonymous tag on it.

Out of all the talented players on the fucking planet, the Eagles signed Vick. HE HUNG AND DROWN DOGS! HELLO! It’s a sad state of affairs when criminal records are swept under the field because the shitforbrains recruiters can’t extend themselves past who’s already been on the SportsCenter highlight reel. Vick ain’t nothin special, and it’s delusional to think there isn’t someone great (“unbelievable athlete” a la Reid and “lobbied for him” McNabb) out there who doesn’t have goddamn prison time listed as Experience. Finger On the Pulse of Personal Conduct Goodell can fuck himself too, indefinitely! which to me doesn’t mean tomorrow when NFL accts go cha-ching. I am done being an Eagles fan, done watching football.

If the Beagles lose, I’m sure Vick has suggestions on how to hang and drown the losers.

Anon, I get your point that animal cruelty comes in many guises. But…don’t you think it’s relevant that the guise Vick chose is illegal? And eating CAFO meat is not? Yes, there are ethical considerations above and beyond the law of the land, but surely equating legal and illegal acts as morally identical neglects the fact that many aspects of what we perceive as moral are derived from the law, and vice versa.

The other thing is that we have built-in moral repugnance for the cruelty that occurs in front of us, by our own hand (see: all those psych studies on people’s reluctance to push a fat man in front of a runaway train even though it will save the lives of many). But we’re willing to flip the switch to send the train onto the siding where the guy is standing, if we don’t have to see it, because somehow that’s better. Of course these studies are funny because they highlight our illogicality, but the fact is that normal people feel extreme repugnance towards causing gruesome violence right in front of them. Not Vick.

Of course, you know my views on football (or boxing) as being more or less a form of violence as entertainment. Perhaps Vick’s attitude will be of benefit to his game.

Or perhaps his training in football encouraged his violent tendencies. [/ducks, runs]

Genomic Repairman,
That’s genuinely funny! You’re correct—I am a coward for posting under an anonymous tag while you put your name behind it. I’ll correct that immediately—I am Proteomic Repairman. There! That should settle it. You’re right—That took big giant balls!
Also, you NEED factory farmed meat to survive just as much as many landowners NEED slaves to keep their plantations running smoothly. Just as much as you NEED to shop at stores that deal with overseas sweatshops, because y’know, a man needs clothes. Dont talk about moral equivalents if you can condone one kind of killing because it meets a perceived need for you.

Dr.J—You covered it, including the illogicality. I would like to expose that illogicality at every turn till more people realize that they are hypocrites.

And for all of you who are so fucking outraged at Vick’s dogfighting, if you don’t think he’s been punished enough, then lobby congress to change the law. He has done his time. Get the fuck over it.
Of course, if you think that people who commit crimes are beyond redemption under any circumstances, well, enjoy your republican party memberships.

Hey Anonymoustache, I am man enough to admit my mistakes. I thought you post said Anonymous, so right off the bat, I need to apologize for that. Secondly I was actually kind of joking in my original post. I used to root for this guy, and I know he payed his debt to society so legally he should be allowed to play. But there is something that pains me on the inside knowing that he can right back to doing what he was before when plenty of ex-cons will usually never be able to reclaim there old jobs (well maybe if they are curbside pharmaceutical salesman). So I agree with you that if we don’t like the way it all got sorted out we should lobby to have the penalties changed.

GR,
Thanks and Agreed. Also, much of what I write is also in (hopefully obvious) snark.
As for Vick potentially getting his life back, I agree that it is a bit tough to deal with. But that’s the point, in my opinion. I hope Vick doesn’t screw this up because then he will cause lasting harm to the idea of rehabilitation, in the public view.
Finally, when on this topic I do tend to use extreme analogies to try and point out that, to a lot of people, the knee-jerk reaction against Vick is just that—extreme. What he did is terrible, but there is a whole subculture of dogfighting and such things, esp in inner cities. Successful rehab, after incarceration and punishment, of Vick might entice many youth currently trapped in such cultures to break out—at least it may give courage to some who are not enamored of the culture but are trapped therein nevertheless. Banishment of Vick would leave all those youth with only the prospect of disdain and exclusion—and thereby provide them no incentive to change their ways.
The way I see it, there is a whole lot more riding on Vick than just the NFL—he could be an instrument for positive social change. And we should never pass up a chance for that.
/steps off soapbox.

Far be it for me to root for Michael Vick. I find what he did to be morally repugnant. However, trying to be least somewhat reasonable here, something which bikemonkey isn’t even feigning (at least we can give him that much), Vick did pay his debt to society. As for HSUS, I still wonder if that was court appointed, and if it were you really can’t lay that at his feet (or rather, I suppose you could, but you’re a moron).

Vick is a convicted felon, and he will probably carry that with him for the rest of his life. He will also be faced with reactions from people which are hugely disproportionate to your average released felon (especially if you take some of the comments here as typical), so it’s equally moronic to claim that he’s gotten off scott-free. For me, I’ve got enough crap to worry about in my own life (like how I’ll troubleshoot my failed experiments from last week, how I’ll pay my own bills this week and next, how I’ll write my case for my tenure review, etc). If Vick got another job, well I’m sure he’s happy about that, and I don’t blame him.

Hmm, I pretty much agree with Thomas Joseph. I really condemn what Vick did in the strongest of terms. I thought it was just awful (and I agree with Dr. J above that there may well be some connection between the societally approved violence of football and the love of illegal violence of dogfighting…)

Nevertheless, he was convicted, went to prison, served his time, and was released. If he were hired as, say, a greeter at WalMart, I doubt we’d be hearing so much outrage – “how DARE WalMart give that vicious dog murderer a job! He should be banished from human society 4ever!” No, we’d probably consider that he’d been sufficiently humiliated and brought down in status in the world – his job would be looked upon as a continuation of his punishment. “Ha ha, he used to be an NFL star and now he’s just a WalMart greeter! That fucking dog killer!”

But to have gone to prison and somehow manage to get to play in the NFL again – oh, that’s not to be tolerated. What, is playing in the NFL a privilege that we citizens bestow only upon our best fellow citizens of highest moral fiber? Someone should pass the word to the NFL players (including, I believe, an Eagles player) who have battered their wives and girlfriends yet go on suiting up every week of the season.

I don’t like what Vick did and I’m glad he was punished with prison time. That’s what we do as a society. But wanting to dictate who should get to hire him, and how much money he’s allowed to make – that’s wanting to keep on punishing him. If you don’t like it that the Eagles have him on staff, then don’t buy tickets, and don’t watch their games. The Philadelphia papers were full of outrage from citizens all over the region and everyone promised to cancel their season tickets and never go to a game again and never watch them on t.v. Yet it seems that in the end, people who thought they could take advantage of all the moral outrage and get a chance to scoop up some of those canceled tickets found, in the end, there were precious few to be had.

[…] minute. A variance in entertainment preference (sure) similar to those who enjoy boxing, hockey or dogfights (ummm….)? Blowing off steam? Cry in the wilderness? Staking a claim? Street theater? One reason, […]